E-Safety Commissioner’s ‘whack-a-mole’ campaign to shut down Alice Springs ‘fight clubs’

Several Alice Springs ‘fight clubs’ glorifying street brawls have been shut down by the online safety watchdog, but Australia’s internet cop is urging the public to not ‘pile on’.

Alice Springs “fight clubs” glorifying street brawls have been shut down by Australia’s internet cop, despite the e-Safety Commissioner warning the battle against these social media pages was an almost-futile game of ‘whack-a-mole’.

This week several social media pages featuring videos of brutal fights between Aboriginal Territorians have been closed following complaints to Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram.

South Australian Senator Kerrynne Liddle said she reported the pages to the e-Safety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, while calling out the “appalling” violence festering in online spaces in Alice Springs and parts of South Australia.

South Australian Senator Kerrynne Liddle said she reported the pages to the e-Safety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Ms Liddle said the videos often featured young women participating in “punch for punch” fighting in full view of the public — on the street, public transport or in front of homes.

The Central Australia-born Arrernte woman said the pages demonstrated the “horrendous rates” of violence in the Territory, particularly among Aboriginal communities.

However, she also called out the sickening “apathy” in the Territory, with too many people unwilling to intervene when they saw violence on the streets, or report it when it popped up in their story feeds.

“That is outrageous,” she said.

“The only consensual fights that should be occurring should be in a boxing ring. That’s it.”

This week several social media pages featuring videos of brutal fights between Aboriginal Territorians have been closed following complaints to Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram.

Ms Liddle said given the size of some of the accounts it was clear they had been active for a while, meaning community leaders and police “didn’t know or didn’t act to shut these sites down”.

In Federal estimates last ,Ms Liddle thanked the e-Safety Commissioner Ms Grant for helping remove the pages on Meta.

But Ms Liddle said while the “fight clubs” pages were removed within hours, she had already found many more.

“This is a situation where there is a significant level of violence — in these cases, women in Aboriginal communities,’ she said.

Australia's eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Ms Grant acknowledged the limits of her power, saying it was up to the social media sites to remove these accounts.

“You’ve got the perfect storm of technology that has been built without safety by design in mind, without proper digital guardrails,” she said.

Ms Grant said monitoring these violent pages was like a “game of whack-a-mole” reporting one violent post at a time.

“We’ve known that fight videos have been a challenge for a long time,” she said.

“We’re asking them to use signals and use things like AI and natural language processing to be able to pick up violative content — content that violates their own terms of service and we expect them to enforce them.”

Ms Grant said without legislative powers, it was up to the public to “not pile on and to further make this harmful content go viral”.